Mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre? Mayor plans to re-examine the issue

Mayor G.T. Bynum made public on Tuesday his plan to re-examine whether there are any mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.


But Bynum has been thinking about it for years. Six years. He and former City Councilor Jack Henderson met with former state archaeologist Bob Brooks in about 2012 to discuss his excavation work more than a decade earlier on behalf of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.


“I always thought, if I am ever mayor and in a position to have executive authority, that I would do something about it,” Bynum said. “Because I think if there are mass graves there, the citizens of Tulsa deserve to know and the victims and their families deserve to know it.”

The city will begin with Oaklawn Cemetery, which has been searched before for unmarked graves, before moving on to Rolling Oaks Memorial Gardens, formerly Booker T. Washington Cemetery, and property near Newblock Park.

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Also, Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience, the project my student is involved in, gets additional money if people follow the campaign. No need to donate, just follow the experience.

This project is driven by black women and centers a fictional black woman, Agnes Bess. We are preserving the story of the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 in which 300 African-Americans were killed and thousands of Black-owned homes and businesses were burned to the ground.

About The Project



Greenwood Avenue is a groundbreaking, emotional exploration into the lives of the African-Americans living in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921,during the era of Black Wall Street, the second rise of the KKK, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, told through the eyes of an elderly Black female protagonist named Agnes Bess. Our hope is to start with Greenwood Avenue: A Virtual Reality Experience and expand into telling more stories about Black history.



As an American woman, I am enamored with our diverse and storied history, but there are parts of American history that are not included in books. I believe and trust that folks want to know the truth about our history and want to do better for our future.

I would like to tell the story of Agnes Bess, an elderly African-American female protagonist and the other residents of the Greenwood District, also known as America's "Black Wall Street", during the Race Riot of 1921. Agnes Bess is a fictional character created to tell the story of this historical event. (more at above link)